


A Study in M-bond adhesives and their effect on Strain Gauges

by rayvanfox



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayvanfox/pseuds/rayvanfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where you go I go<br/>What you see I see<br/>I know I'd never be me<br/>Without the security<br/>Of your loving arms<br/>Keeping me from harm<br/>Put your hand in my hand<br/>And we'll stand...</p><p>Or, How to control agent 007 on comm with only your voice, a study in five parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Primary Bond

I’d do it on purpose. Of course I did. And of course she knew it and she knew why. And she disapproved. But in that way she had where it wasn’t actually disapproval. it was the opposite, but with a begrudging aspect and severe qualifications that managed to still hold you in check. And yes, she used that same tactic all the time in her interactions with me, not just the stern look or cool silence given in response to my pronunciation of the word ‘ma’am’ as a cross between ‘marm’ and ‘mum’. 

But I did it because it was true. She was both my queen and my mother. And yes, my boss. My superior. Not just in years in the service, but in successful missions and, at one point, I’ve no doubt, effectiveness in the field. But ever since she recruited me, I was her bairn. Her cub, really. To break (mostly) and train (overly) and put to good use (as the record shows). I wasn’t the only one, and she didn’t play favorites unless she wanted to motivate us with a little ‘healthy’ competition (the sorts of things we competed at were never good for our health, however). But it is possible that of all her agents, I was the one most completely her creation. Her creature. I’ll not make any allusions to Frankenstein and his monster because they don’t apply here (maybe to Silva, but not to me). 

I will, however, admit to feeling very much like a pup when I first arrived at MI6, with too much energy to train and a ready attachment to anyone who would throw me a bone. She made good use of that fact and got a tenfold return on her investment. Not without continual hassle, as I never was good on leash. And she was known for keeping a tight rein. Early on I learned I wasn’t to undermine that reputation publicly, even if she made allowances in private for the times I’d slip my collar and it’d take more than a whistle to summon me home. 

Honestly, I can’t imagine anyone else putting up with me. But it wasn’t purely my desire to test her boundaries that kept me on the edge of, or out of, her good graces. And, thank all the gods, she knew that. It was in my nature, and in her stubborn refusal to break it. She started out believing, bless her, that we would work better if we hadn’t been broken down completely, when there was some part of us left that hadn’t been trained into oblivion. There were some that didn’t get this leniency (I have a theory Silva was one of those), and others who didn’t want it.

Then there was me. My will was the size of the moor I grew up on, and she appreciated that when I came to her I was half-feral. Said this would serve me well if I learned to manage it. Which I did. Mostly. But management and control are two different things.

She knew this better than I did, luckily. And used that knowledge to her distinct advantage when I was in the field. Our advantage. It was for the greater good, and I knew that, even as the moments of chafing occurred. I was able to endure them only because I knew there would be times she’d do nothing to stop me running free. Which is how she managed to ensure my repeated return. 

It wasn’t a game, necessarily, but it was a dynamic, one that included a hefty amount of power play. She was remarkably good at it, though assuredly there was not a soul I could have remarked it to. Even Bill wouldn’t have understood completely. He was always just slightly out of his depth when it came to her and myself. She liked it that way too. 

But this whole situation is why having her on comm during a mission was so vitally important. She knew exactly how to pull my strings simply by using her voice. It was a complicated dance that we’d taught ourselves and certainly didn’t look as engrossing from the outside, but it took over my body and mind when we were in it. Because it was a two-way street, that dynamic: the flow of information, the decision making process, the push and pull of giving orders and obeying them. Or not, as the case may be. Dealing with the fallout of all of these was another matter. All that mattered in the moment was that she was there with me as guide and witness and coordinator and, at the end of the day, the responsible party. Giving over that last bit of onus to her was both a relief and a burden. Because it meant I could be free to do what needed doing even if it weren’t strictly allowed, but also, were I to cock it up to an ungovernable extreme it was her neck on the chopping block. And aside from the threat of having to work under someone other than her, it was clear that she would have my bollocks under her knife even if she had to come at me headless. 

All this to say I didn’t blame her a jot for the command to take the ‘fatal’ shot. The one she gave agent Moneypenny that took me down. My earwig had fallen out during the scuffle on top of the train so I wasn’t privy to the conversation that led up to it, but I could reconstruct it virtually verbatim from experience and extrapolation. And I knew what it meant that she’d given it. Anyone else can say what they will about the necessity of treating agents as expendable if it means compromising a mission--the greater good and all that--but I know what it did to her. I saw it behind her eyes that first night back in London at her house. I saw it in every interaction we had after. In her insistence on my continuing in the field even after failing the tests. In sending me, of all people, to Silva. It was the same thing she read all over me that let her know there was no other option but to allow my continued service. We were two peas in the proverbial pod and if one needed to be working, the other did as well. 

Perversely, however, it was also true that if one couldn’t continue, it was the other’s job to take up the mantle. Hence my ready pledge of allegiance to Mallory and my immediate return to active duty directly after the funeral.

I wasn’t ready, however. Not physically, that was fine. In fact, not in effectiveness as an agent in any circumstance under the sun, except being on comm. The first time there was a different commanding voice on the line I tore out the earwig and crushed it under foot before going a bit rabid and exceeding even my previous record for overkill. I got a stern talking to and was grounded from missions for six weeks. I resolved to use that time to address the issue. The only option I could come up with was learning how to hear that voice as something I could connect to, on a minor level at least. I knew there was no way to find the sort of connection she and I had achieved, that was impossible, we were so locked in we were embedded in each other. But something, anything to make me feel even remotely cared for while out risking my arse for a Queen and Country that no longer included my original definitions of both (ie, Ma’am and Skyfall). If I couldn’t be one with my guide, at least I could learn to see us as on the same side.

It was a challenge initially, however. Because they gave me Q. The new Q, who was all of seventeen by the looks of him. He was brilliant and more than competent, and could be relied on in many capacities, but as far as I was able to tell, mostly in the army definition of Quartermaster: ‘responsible for providing supplies ’, not the Navy definition: ‘responsible for steering and signals’. 

Dear old Boothroyd had never fancied the Navy’s way of doing things and had left comm duties to his Ms, and Ma’am, of course, would never have thought to allow anyone else the reins. When Boothroyd was replaced and Mallory took over, there was a shift of duties mostly due to the highly technical nature of gathering the intel needed for the optimal guidance of an agent in the field. I understood this, logically. But having to listen to, and obey, Q’s voice as he figured out where to steer me in the Tube when chasing Silva grated on every nerve I had. I wanted to like him, I did. Tanner and Eve were big fans on contact. Mallory lavished more praise on him than any other acquisition during that strange reorganisational time when headquarters was more an idea -- and an underground one at that -- than a reality. 

Which meant he couldn’t come any more highly recommended. And he really was a wizard with information, as if he had magnetised fingertips and the right shards just flew to him and aligned themselves the moment he asked. And he had a pleasant voice. Which, oddly, goes a long way in purely aural situations. And so, I did what I could to convince myself that he was worthy of holding the tether we needed between us to work symbiotically thousands of miles apart. And to my complete surprise, the moment he copped on to what I was doing (which was damn near instantly), he made it exceptionally easy. 

His secret? Banter. A solution that could have been lifted directly out of my own playbook. I bordered on astonished the first time he used it. Well, to be truthful, I almost didn’t catch on the very first try. His approach is more sardonic than my own, but that tends to fit the situation well, so it was almost lost to me as his very dry way of being charming. And yet, it brought out fitting responses from me once I’d caught my footing. Which quite readily turned into a series of volleys that we soon revelled in, despite minor expressions of disapproval from others within earshot. Double oh nine would roll his eyes at me (or the aural equivalent when not in my sights: a grunt) whenever we were on a mission together. I quickly ceased to care, as ‘flirting’ with Q became my lifeline. 

The way Q and I teased, cajoled, flirted, and joked came to be our own personal line of connection, our way of gauging each other’s situation, the strings upon which we pulled to assess tension. He couldn’t anticipate me quite as Ma’am was able, but he knew within a fraction of a second which tightness in my voice meant which potential for destruction, as well as whose, and I’d graphed his pauses, their weight and length, to be as precise as a richter scale for obstacles to my continued existence. In a much shorter time than I’d thought possible, we became a very good team that others in the field either made note to avoid or asked to be assigned to. 

The memorable mission where we had Moneypenny as our third will go down in the annals of MI6 as the most frequently replayed recording of a comm conversation since their advent. It was incidentally her last field op and she will maintain there’s no way to top it so it might as well be her parting shot. And a dead shot it was. (I think Q misses her on comm sometimes, as he once in awhile affects his ‘Evie’ voice when cajoling me, though that could only be because it invariably works to get his desired end).

I still missed Ma’am and her imperious way of commanding and expecting obedience, which she then counted herself lucky if she received 75% of the time, but only in a nostalgic sense. Now there is less of an adversarial tone and more a cooperative one, which makes sense given our relative ages and levels of experience. But also, it just fits Q in a way that has endeared him to me much more, and more quickly, than I’d expected. I’m not sure I will ever count him as family, per se, but at least I don’t feel rudderless anymore. In which case I’ve come to believe that for me, he now inhabits every definition of quartermaster out there.

\--J.B.


	2. Secondary Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skyfall is where we start  
> A thousand miles and poles apart  
> Where worlds collide and days are dark  
> You may have my number, you can take my name  
> But you'll *ever have my heart

How the hell did I get here? I seem to ask myself this question a lot.

The answer is, oddly, not due to actually trying. Recruitment was disconcertingly like the that time when I was 14 and was brought into the dean’s office for hacking in to change my grades, but came out with a schedule full of computer science classes.

M’s harshness was always tempered by an incredibly dry wit and the tiniest flash of true mirth in the corner of her eye, which made it easier to bear. Not that said flash was necessarily directed at you, per se, more at the situation, or simply the absurdity of life. I was never quite sure. 

To be honest, the first time I saw it, the day I walked into her office all but handcuffed for having bent the will of one of her servers to my own and walked out again with license to call virtually the entire network my playground, when I saw that bright spark of mirth set in a humorless, hard face, I couldn’t help but equate it with the ‘kiss’ set at the corner of Mrs. Darling’s mouth. The one reserved for her alone that neither her children nor her husband could catch. 

I admit to having the urge to play Peter Pan for her, to do whatever it took to catch it for myself. I soon learned that Ma’am inspired that sort of loyalty and zeal from most of her recruits. Soon after that, I learned she already had a Peter. And that her favorite occupation was dangling that twinkle of mirth -- that kiss -- in plain sight but just out of his reach and then watching him dance for it. He would go to any length -- _any length_ \-- to retrieve it, but by this time he was acutely aware of exactly how out of reach it really was. That didn’t matter, really, not anymore. The ‘kiss’ had become a symbolic carrot, a game they played, both aware that it was already his but that he would never insult either of them by claiming it. 

They were fascinating to watch, really. It was a pity (for many reasons more dire than this, clearly) that I ended up with such a short amount of time for collecting data around this phenomenon. Right now I feel as though I could have used a decade’s worth. 

I’m not sure if Mallory hit upon dumb luck, or is a lot more perceptive and on top of things that most of us give him credit for, but I thought him mad when he first told me -- through Eve, of course -- that I was to take over comm duties when the double ohs were on missions. Especially 007. That was in the memo, and it’s what set my heart racing over anything else. You can’t blame me, for fuck’s sake, he is like a runaway train, that one. Worse. Like an unbroken stallion that only a fool would try to put a lead on, let alone a saddle and bridle. The first time I tried to even just touch his flank, he bucked and bolted, broke through every fence in the yard and wreaked unprecedented havoc in the field. 

After, Tanner laid his hand on my shoulder as mine cradled my head and intimated that Mallory -- M -- was as unsurprised at the outcome as he himself was. I believe the phrase was, ‘it was bound to happen sometime’. I chuckled mirthlessly and noted that it didn’t take away the sting of defeat. He said something about lost battles and winning wars, and I went back to the drawing board to come up with a strategy.

What I realised was, I needed a ‘kiss’. Or at least the impression of having one. Something for him to strive for, or even against, if necessary. A game. Maybe one with less of an implicit challenge than Ma’am’s, but I didn’t hold as much sway as she did anyway. Obviously. She’d made him for God’s sake.

It was Eve that helped me hit upon the right thing. Quite by accident, I believe. She made me listen to his shameless conversation with her in Macau before he dropped the damned earwig into her champagne. She was simply sharing with me what he was like on comm when M -- Ma’am -- wasn’t listening, but it was the perfect example of how he looked for some sort of connection when he felt rudderless. 

It took me a bit to get the right tone of voice, one that could imply a ‘kiss’ and still be worthy of listening to, and then a bit longer for him to see this voice as an invitation to play. Once he did, he took to it like, well, like Peter Pan to flight. So natural and effortless that when he was accused -- by others -- of being a shameless flirt and clogging comm with unnecessary chatter, he looked nonplussed. I immediately found a roundabout way to set everyone straight about the necessity of our communication and folks backed off. We ended up with a reputation and were the target of many gibes and much supposition. I was aware that, like Ma’am, I was turning a blind eye and tacitly allowing him preferential treatment for the greater good. I didn’t feel bad about it because clearly there was a precedent, and also Tanner and Eve, if not Mallory (at least, not officially) backed me up. 

We were a good team. All of us. Tanner was practically always in the room when we were on comm, though it was the rarest of times when he spoke more than a murmur to me about a decision. I’m not sure 007 knew he was there most of the time, though I suppose the ubiquity of his presence over the years must have been such that assuming it and then ignoring it was simpler than anything else. Eve also listened in and provided support when she could, or, famously, went into the field as physical backup for him and vocal backup for me. It was only once in a blue moon that Mallory -- M -- joined us, and he always seemed a faint combination of bemused and amused, to the point that I had to keep him out of my peripheral or I’d lose my nerve and fall into giggles over our ridiculous arrangement.  
And yet, here we are. And miraculously, it works. Our mission success rate is remarkably high and our morale is through the roof. Tanner assures me it’s unprecedented. And that it has filtered into other double oh’s work climate for 007 to be as contented as he is. 

Maybe it’s because I don’t dangle anything in front of him. Like the magician who has you pick a card and return it to the pile only to find it in your shirt pocket, I simply remind him he already has it. My ‘kiss’. And that he knows exactly what to do with it: lob it back at me so I can give it to him again and again. And again. 

\--Q


	3. Tertiary Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For this is the end  
> I've drowned and dreamt this moment  
> So overdue I owe them  
> Swept away, I'm stolen

Oh, it was absurd. Ma’am would have hated it. It’s everything she railed against in comm protocol. But there honestly was no other way to tame him, Q was right about that. He went wild again after M -- Ma’am -- left us. Left him.

I’ve read their files, I’ve heard the lore. Their history was written in every space, every memory, every line of their correspondence over the years -- between all of these, too. It was written in the lines on their skin in indelible ink -- the frown and smile lines on her face, the scars all over his body. It’s not wrong to say they were a part of each other, but it’s not right to assume there was no one else could hold him like she could. Well, not _like_ she could, but as effectively. 

Most of the whole circus was shocked to learn it was Q who took up the reins. Not me, not Tanner. And, by proxy, not M -- Mallory -- Sir. Everyone else figured Bond had found his match by bedding him. And there were actual betting pools on who was the dom and who the sub. I wouldn't put it past Tanner to have started those, simply as a red herring. Because that’s what it was. It had nothing to do with sex. I was dead certain of that. If anyone would know, it would be me. I know each of their tells first and second-hand. If they had fucked, it had absolutely no bearing on their working relationship. That wasn’t the game. It was better than that. More innocent, more carefree. And yet, it was to do with deadly serious stuff. I honestly don’t know how they did it, but always marveled at the trick once it was pulled off. 

I never understood how there could be agents who didn’t like working on missions with them. I would have killed to be on some of the ones I listened to remotely. My one chance is, to date, the highlight of my career. Though given that my first mission with 007 was the low point, I suppose it averages out. 

Sometimes I wonder if what happened between us in Macau had happened before that first mission, if things wouldn’t have turned out differently. I go back to that moment of pulling the trigger over and over, my 20/20 hindsight and intimate knowledge of him anticipating his movements enough to leave no risk to him anymore. Over and over I’ve taken that shot in my mind, getting it right so many times I halfway forget the reality was so very wrong. The course of events that followed would still have occurred on some level whether I’d gotten it right or not, I don’t fool myself into believing it all happened because of me, but it was tempting for a while. 

Q has mapped out the inevitabilities of that entire disaster, and the vast majority of the strands lead directly to what happened. It eases my mind to look at the web of brackets and trails and offshoots and literal dead ends sometimes, seeing possibilities untested, knowing the probabilities never get markedly better. We’ve never shown it to 007. Tanner once expressed the wish that it had never existed. Q intimated once that it had been his mourning process. I believe him.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. Or maybe I’m not. Everything we are now, everything the circus is, is still irrevocably locked into who Ma’am was and how she functioned. In general, and with each of us. But if you looked at the schematic of lines of influence and connection between everyone here, they’d all center around Ma’am and 007’s bond. Heh. Bond.

I once joked to Tanner about 007’s name and how he used it all the time as if it were a cover even though it wasn’t, and his eyebrow went up in a way that got me thinking. Is that too much? Would she have really been so sentimental? Did she know back when she first recruited him that she would die in his arms, or was the naming a self-fulfilling prophecy? (It doesn’t help that the name James means ‘the one who replaces’.) Tanner is the only one who’d know the answers, but he is better than any secret agent I’ve ever met at keeping things to himself. Damn him.

\--E.M.


	4. Ionic Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let the sky fall  
> When it crumbles  
> We will stand tall  
> Face it all together  
> At sky fall

Of course they’re extraordinarily good. They wouldn’t be working for me if they weren’t the best out there. 

Though, to be fair, they still aren’t working for me. They are working for her. And out of respect for her memory, they follow my orders. (Or don’t, as the case may be.) 

I don’t mind, honestly, because 98.5% of the time it amounts to the same thing.

I know that when they talk amongst themselves I still haven’t achieved the automatic use of my letter designation. I’m still not their M. Not in private. Now, not one of them would dare slip up on the job, in public, with anyone else but their little cohort. Their, for lack of a better term, family. And I honestly don’t mind being the distant uncle. I’ve never felt very paternal. It’s not in my nature, or my job description, and I don’t wonder if her conflation of identity with role wasn’t a detriment to her effectiveness. I am not speaking ill of the dead, mind you. I’m more than anyone aware of how the events surrounding the breach of headquarters did _not_ have their origin in anything out of order that may have happened on her watch. That belief -- that knowledge, as it’s not a theory, it’s a fact -- I will defend to the end of my days. 

But her pack -- if you will allow a metaphor from the animal kingdom, well aware it’s the most apt and meant in a complimentary manner -- functions in their own way, and I’ve taken Tanner’s unwaveringly sage advice to not disturb that particular mode of functioning any more than is necessary. 

This is not to say that I allow myself to be ignorant of its workings, I keep a keen but removed eye on them. And truthfully, I’m rewarded for that by not being left out of the loop unless strictly necessary. There are certain things -- I know vaguely of them and the fact that there is even a code around them -- that it’s better I don’t know about until they’ve come off, or until there is a situation that needs intervention. Though, not surprisingly to me, (though I might be the only one in that state) the percentage of times they have fallen into the latter outcome is exceedingly low. 

It’s not as if I give them the illusion of freedom and sit around watching them like mice in a maze, I’ve honestly divested myself of a certain amount of responsibility around a certain category of operation. Notice I didn’t say accountability. Tanner and Moneypenny are aware of the difference, and count on it. ‘Upon the King’, if you will. That is unspoken, but certain. And necessary. But I’ve given those two enough leeway to act in accordance with their directives while managing that certain category of missions which they have named: For Her Eyes Only. 

I can’t tell you how effective this ‘breach of protocol’, if you want to call it by it’s technical description, has been. Mostly because it’s so off the record I don’t ever have such data. Q might, damn him. Bless him. 

But this ‘dirty little secret’, this loophole in the protocols, this covert operation within the covert ops branch, has saved more lives and more entire countries than one wants to admit have ever been in danger. It will be my legacy in the service, though there might -- sometime in the far future -- be only five people that will understand that. People who would be smart and perceptive enough to find a trace of it, let alone acknowledge its extent and importance. 

But really, if it keeps the she-wolf’s pack busy and happy, that’s all right with me. Someday when they look back over this particular body of work they will -- they might -- finally tip their hats, and possibly their hearts, and admit that they have been working for me at least half the time. I won’t hold my breath, though. 

\--G. M.


	5. Covalent Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the end  
> Hold your breath and count to ten  
> Feel the earth move and then  
> Hear my heart burst again  
> For this is the end

You want the recording itself, not the transcript. 

No, I’m telling you, not asking. The transcript holds only about two thirds of the information that passed between the participants that day. If you don’t understand that, you have no business asking clearance to access this mission. 

No, I’m not joking. 

Do you know the agents that were assigned this particular operation? If the answer is 'only by reputation', you have invariably come to the wrong conclusions already. If you haven’t gone out for a pint with at least one of them, and preferably all three -- at once -- there is nothing I can do to illuminate why this mission played out the way it did. Or any mission with any combination of those three, really. 

One of them in particular is a special case. Has been so from the start. The previous M was more than aware of this fact and trained him up in a particular way. If you ask me, the foresight and delicacy that required, and the masterful way it was handled, was the single greatest achievement of her time in command. 

No, I’m not joking. I’m almost never joking. 

Or, I’m joking all the time, which basically amounts to the same thing. Ask M. Oh, you can’t.

No, not because he’s not willing to answer the question, but because she is no longer able to.

Ma’am was something special in her own right. ‘Thing’, yes, not ‘one’. She was a very specific combination of human, machine, and animal, really. Trust, reason, and tenacity, she had each in spades. 

She ruled with the fist of a beneficent dictator, aware that asking more than someone can give leads to the exact right amount of allegiance, results, and drive to impress that keeps your operatives hungry and loyal simultaneously.

Her sense of justice was outstripped only by her capacity to care. And if you think it was the other way round, you need to reexamine every action she ever made. That was her one abiding trait: she cared. 

So bloody much. About everything. And everyone. 

But most relevant to us right now, about 007.

Not that all of her agents weren’t extremely important, especially the double ohs and those that she personally recruited. In fact, anyone she brought into the circus she felt as her own. That’s part of that animal nature I mentioned. She marked them as hers and treated them as such. Myself included, actually. I was her creature every bit as much as Bond was. But I didn’t have that special designation. Honestly, no one did. 

I didn’t completely understand it, never pretended to, but I learned how to work with their specific attachment, which consisted of blind loyalty and constantly rewon trust. No matter how good I got, I always worked from the outside, as it was clear to me there was no room to pretend to do anything else. This, paradoxically, is why she liked me, kept me close, made me into an extension of herself -- right hand sounds cliche but couldn’t be more apt -- because I respected their dynamic and worked hard to keep it purely their own jurisdiction while simultaneously carrying out all the incidentals necessary for it to function without blowing the department apart. 

It was, to be honest, a balancing act of epic proportions, and Mallory spotted it the first time he witnessed them -- us -- interacting. I was the silent partner and he tapped me immediately to be his chief of staff for that reason. Perceptive bloke. 

Though, he did get one thing wrong. To begin with, he pegged 007 as a threat instead of the asset that he is. To be fair, that is one of Bond’s least well known talents -- that, in the right hands, mind you, his ability to take inevitable control of any given situation is exceeded only by his capacity to look like a distinct liability. 

We love him for it, but it has been a trick to find the right hands. It almost felt like a magic trick when Q got pulled out of the hat. I must tell you that when Ma’am offered him the job of quartermaster I was gobsmacked. But then, when I thought about it and realised that every reservation I had with Q was the type that one must override to see 007 as he really is, I copped on. I’m not saying she knew the extent of that parallel or how it would play out. She wasn’t quite prescient enough for that. Though, to think about it, I believe she did make an allusion to how she would ‘go the way of Boothroyd someday, Lord help us’, so who knows?

Not I. I know a lot less than everyone thinks I do. And a lot more at the same time. I guess it amounts to what I’m sure of. Which, to be quite honest, is very little. But of that small amount I’m _very certain_.

On the shortlist is my faith in Q and 007. Separately and together. Also, Moneypenny, in the same ways. And thankfully, they, each in their turn, and to their own personal extents, are certain of my faith in them and return theirs to me. It’s a bit like what I imagine a good marriage has, actually, if that’s not being inappropriate. 

No, nothing like that, I meant inappropriately using an intimate term for something that isn’t intimate. At least not physically. At least I don’t think so. I’m never quite sure with those three. It makes things more fun not to be. Haven’t you heard about the pool? Quite a bit of fun, that. The kitty is quite high these days. The betting spiked right after this mission you’ve asked about, actually. 

I mean, of course. You’ll understand why in a moment.

Shall I quit boring you with irrelevant details and let you have at it?

By all means. Enjoy. I know you will. 

\--B.T.


End file.
